Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Originally wrote this preview of my pal Joe's new act for Never Enough Notes, where there's a Soundcloud player with more material and so on. This tune's deffo my favourite BB&MP tune tho, at least at the moment. Some of the greatest awkwardfunk i've heard in years.

Ben Butler and Mouse Pad is the new project of Joe Howe (previously known as Germlin, orone half of gay against you), in which cardboard castles and adult hyperactivity disorders take a backseat to freeform synthesizer solos and extremely geometric pullovers.

Joe's long-standing synth fascination shines through, but this time there's much more of an emphasis on playing. It's still dancefloor-friendly but more reined-in and richly melodic than before, recalling the warm ooze of the Weather Report or Zappa's Waka/Jawaka and Grand Wazoo albums, as well as a sense of pushing synth sounds as far as they'll go that's akin to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (another stated influence). Or, as one last.fm user neatly describes them, "like Prince and Stevie Wonder on your favourite arcade machine".

As well as the laudably unfashionable likes of prog and jazz fusion, BB&MP identify with the Scandinavian skweee scene, and have released one side of a 7" named "Future Tent" on the genre's spiritual home, Norway's Dødpop label. As well as that record, there's a mini-album of "Future Tent" remixes by the likes of oMMM, The Niallist and Tangles, and a 5-track compilation of early stuff named, fittingly, Early.

So far, gigs have been largely conducted in Europe, but North American audiences will soon be able to get their first taste of BB&MP in the flesh, as they play 22 dates across the US in January and February in support of indie stalwarts Deerhoof. Any of our transatlantic readers would be well advised to take a look.

Monday, 22 November 2010

Tory government, strikes, riots in the street, papal visit and now a Royal wedding to boot. Yep, at the moment, comparisons of the 2010s to the 1980s are just serving to confirm the cliché that clichés are clichés because they're true, in that they're both clichéd and true.

With that in mind, a revival of Prolapse's 1997 not-quite-anthem "Deanshanger" might well be in order. Formed "under a table" at the University of Leicester student union, Prolapse stated their intention of becoming "the most depressing band ever" and set about the task by mashing up krautrock rhythms, punk rock and massive swathes of brutalised grey shoegaze feedback, topped off by twin vocalists "Scottish" Mick Derrick (psychotic, Glaswegian) and Linda Steelyard (sarcastic, deadpan, English Rose) enacting fearsome psychodramas over the top.

The music... was crapThe claise1... were crapThe hair... was crapEverything... was crap

Opening with a blast of haze before a rhythm section like a wired descendent of "Yoo Doo Right" kicks in, layered with snaking guitar lines and – yes! – bagpipes, "Deanshanger"2 then lays out a laundry list of grievances against the '80s, from a time approximately equidistant from their end and their 21st-century revival. The Royal Wedding "wasnae worth the paper it was written on". The papal visit "promised much but didn't deliver" (i'm always amused/baffled by this bit: just what were you expecting, Mick?)

Meanwhile, Steelyard (now a reporter for the Leicester Mercury) enacts the part of someone "trapped in a room" and fruitlessly trying to work out how to escape ("even if I could build a door, I couldn't reach the wood because my feet are strapped to the floor"), the wall of noise around her voice isolating her even further, her tone resigned. By the end she has given over to Stockholm syndrome ("well I feel quite at home here now...")

"I'm glad it's all over, wrapped up in a box and put under the bed," proclaims Derrick at the song's conclusion, but the circling spiral of drums and feedback loops after he's finished seem almost to acknowledge that it's not over, it's never over, and no matter how hard you shout it's only a matter of time before it's all back again.

1 Whoever reviewed this in the NME at the time had never heard the word "claise", and proceeded to make a right tit of themselves when their quip about Prolapse condemning the "theatrical productions" of the 1980s rather undermined their knowing-condescension schtick.2 Lord knows, what, if any, connection all this has with the Northamptonshire village of Deanshanger.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

The word supergroup has been bandied about, but happily “Side Show” swerves the usual pitfalls of ego and bloat that the term suggests. The amount of disparate talents actually works in their favour: as each song is penned by at least two band members, it seems like the songs’ streamlined nature must have been necessary just to fit everyone in...

Friday, 12 November 2010

Synopsis: After the breaking of the Fellowship, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli join up with a small band of Rohirrim warriors and mount a valiant defence of the fortress at Helm's Deep against the massed forces of Saruman's Uruk-hai army. Soon they are joined by a band of Elves of Lórien, Huorns and 2,000riders led by Éomer, who proceed to stand around with their noses in the air proclaiming that a fortress is a privilege, not a right.

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Would you guys kill me if i coined the term "witch noise"? You would? Oh well, never mind then.

Former Glitch City man Tim J aka Wingus aka Chinese Church, now operating another label, Stone Lion, has released a 5-track web-EP "recorded, compiled and released on Hallowe'en 2010" with all samples, oscillators, effects, artwork and photos by himself.

Aptly named Hallowe'en 2010, the result is a bit like if the Scarefest rides at Alton Towers weren't set in old science research facilities or scary circuses but in a network of abandoned, haunted abattoirs. Its whispers, shrieks, howls and all-round mechanical clanking also occasionally recall the claustrophobic lost-soul squalls of the denser early Third Eye Foundation records.

"They're Driving the Hovering Castle" is probably my favourite initially, both because of the way it develops from a hissing digital thunderstorm into something both disjointedly melodic and weirdly rhythmical, but always slightly beyond the listener's grasp in both contexts. Could the title refer to "The Last Hovering Castle" by Warcloud, who Tim got me into in the first place? Or Jonathan Swift's floating tyranny Laputa? Or the Hiyao Miyazaki anime inspired by it? Maybe all or none of the above.

"Ganesh Particle Conjured from the Eternal Lattice" is also really good, sounding like a bit like a 60s radio commercial being imprisoned by an electric fence made of whistling, churning feedback, but it's all worth a look. Get the whole EP here and check for Stone Lion's other holiday release We Wish You Are Happy New Year.1 They also have other releases which are neither holiday-themed nor downloadable, so you will have to pay Australian dollars or the equivalent thereof for them.

Hiya! So sorry i've been away un-blogging for so long... i actually have a fairly good reason - done 8 weeks of an NCTJ diploma to become a, like proper journalist and everything. If i also told you that course is a mere 20 weeks till full qualification and therefore somewhat intense, and that to get there i wake up at 6.45am daily and don't get home till 7pm, and the fact that there's also 30KB, label administration, writing for other blogs, sleeping and some other stuff i also have to do, y'can probably why the blogging's dropped off a bit.

i promise to get more done soon, but in the meantime: a) you might wanna catch me instead as @diss1 on Twitter [HA! you hypocrite! caught you! etc.] where i now find communicating in sub-SMS chunks to actually be useful, manageable and actually kinda fun [yeh yeh i was wrong in this article i admit it, but hey in the last week or so Charlie Brooker's come out and basically admitted that the last several years of his work was nihilistic gallery-playing so i think i'm allowed one].

Now, a brief return to mix-making. i used to do a load of mixes before Google started summarily shutting down music blogs for copyright infringement. i still make them, but now i just don't post them up any more. Maybe i should start a separate blog just for mixes! That'd actually be a pretty good idea. OK, just realised my stream of consciousness is now conversing with itself, this is no good. Anyway.

According to Windows Media Player i currently have 1344 hours of audio on my laptop hard drive. So what i've done is yam all that into a playlist, order it all in track length order (shortest to longest) and then made a mix of the first 80 minutes1 of that. As bewildering sound collages go, i think it's a pretty neat one!

i've edited out some repeat artists at my discretion (basically so it doesn't start off with an entire JAPSHITFUN album) but otherwise the whole mellifluous mess is verbatim.

Thursday, 2 September 2010

i can't decide if i find this song terrible or amazing, or somewhere in the middle, or veering dementedly between the two. i think the fact someone compared Your Infamous Harp to the horrible System of a Down in the comments made me flinch, and it does initially come off a tad wacky. But then again, the production's really good, the title's obviously amazing1 , the lyrics have a certain silly wit,2 and the song structure's appealingly inventive too.3

and i like the way the guy singer seems to be deliberately aping Fred Schneider in his semi-regular exclamations of "cock lobster!" Actually, having now listened a few times, i've decided this is actually pretty good.

1 In fact, i only discovered it by Googling to see if anyone had actually written a song with this name yet.2 "i don't want no lobster from you/i think that's very, very rude/you have such harsh words/for being such a delicate food".3 Such as the 6/8 switch at 1:10 and then back into driving 4/4 a few bars later.

Monday, 30 August 2010

Happy bank holiday! The sun is out where i live in what must be a last-ditch push by the British summer to remind everyone it actually happened at all. So here's a suitably sunny song of the day, The Delgados' epic take on ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", recorded in session for John Peel in 2002.

Here are the reasons this version is better than the original:

1. Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.
2. The Delgados version doesn make use of stupid Muppet Show backing vocals everywhere. See also:
3. The Delgados' use of a real string section. ELO might well be using a real string section as well, but crucially, even if it is, they make it sound like a tacky carnival ride backing track.
4. The Delgados do not have a stupid boxing ring bell at periodic intervals.
5. i can't hear any handclaps on the ELO version.
6. Slightly unfair given technological progression etc. etc. perhaps, but The Delgados' vocoder doesn't sound like it was knocked together by Willy Wonka on his lunch hour.
7. Again, Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.

It appears Lily Allen and The Decemberists have also covered the song, so i guess if i ever wished to gain a newfound respect for ELO, i would need only to listen to either of those versions.

Thursday, 26 August 2010

The video's been posted up around the internets a few times, but usually in the context of animationfanboys on some "hey, this song is shitty, but look at the amazing video by animation pioneer Guido Manuli!" tip. Well they're wrong, all wrong. The video is of incidental interest, and mainly cuz of how adorable Rita Pavone is serenading an imaginary potato, rather than the decent but rather standard animation, in which the potato dances around a bit, tunnels into and out of the ground, fires off a pair of six-shooters, swallows a shovelful of dirt for no apparent reason, and then repeats the whole thing for a second time before zooming off in a rocket. Better are the psychedelic flying 3D letters – "Potato", of course – and Rita's completely un-self-conscious and wonderful dancing at 2:18.

Really, the charm of this 1977 novelty not-quite-hit is increased by how unlikely it is to even exist. i have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to write a song about being (named after) a vegetable, but the fact that they did is somehow very encouraging. Probably the best thing about it is how much joy and passion Rita puts into singing such an obviously ridiculous piece. She attacks it as if her life depends on it, and by the time the stunt key change kicks in at 3:00, she sounds like she might actually explode with excitement.

Sunday, 22 August 2010

Kishka (sometimes kishke, kiszka or keeshka) is a Slavic-originating term for various types of sausage or intestine stuffed filled with meat and/or meal, and popular among Eastern Europeans, Ashkenazi Jews and diaspora communities of both.

Its several types include kaszanka, a black pudding-esque concoction involving a pig's intestine filled with pig's blood and barley. Sometimes liver is used as a filling; sometimes buckwheat, ground potatoes (as in Greater Bialystok kiszka) or other grains are subsituted for the barley. Paprika is frequently added for flavour. Ashkenazic Jewish kishke obeys kashrut restrictions by using beef intestines (or sometimes, an edible synthetic substitute) filled with matzo meal, rendered fat (schmaltz) and spices. So-called "false kishka" is actually helzel, chicken neck-skin stuffed with a flour-based mix. Finally, believe it or not, there's such a thing as vegetarian kishka.

Someone has stolen Polish-American lyricist, composer, and Clown Prince of Polka Walt Solek's kishka, and, though he might not look it, he is extremely unhappy about this. Intending to secure the return of his intestine-based feast through song, he penned "Who Stole the Keeshka?" (as it was originally spelt), which has since become a minor polka standard to the extent that it is often credited as "Polish traditional" rather than to Solek (lyrics) and polka promoter and musician Walter Dana. It has been recorded by numerous groups including Grammy-winning polka artist Frankie Yankovic, polka revivalists Brave Combo, and dependably dreadful musical comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic.

The song veers oddly and abruptly between the mournful verses bemoaning the loss of the food, the slightly more optimistic questioning of the chorus, and the frankly balls-out, horn-filled joyous exuberance of the instrumental sections, also featuring some truly wild1 tambourine-playing. This probably says something profound about the Polish-American experience, but search me if i know what it is.

Solek's anguished vocals really convey the pain of the lost blood sausage: it's actually quite surprising that someone can imbue the words "it was hanging on a rack" with so much emotion. After a while he moves from anger to the bargaining stage, offering up pretty much any of his other Polish delicacies in exchange for the kishka's return:

You can take my szynkaTake my fine kielbasaYou can take my [stewed]? czernina2But gimme back that kishka

Happily, everything turns out ok for Walt: at the end of the song it turns out that it was in fact Yashil who stole the kishka, the big bastard. To his credit, he returns it to the rack, and Solek thanks him, just in time for another tambourine-soaked hoedown frenzy. He's lucky Walt's such a nice guy. i'd have considered giving him a fine kielbasa round the face, to be honest with you.

Walt Solek's records seem insanely hard to find nowadays. There's a couple on eBay, two records on Spotify for British/Scando readers, and that really is about it. For ages i've been trying to find a tune of his called "Old Whiskey Shoes Polka", which was used to great effect by Les Blank in his 1980 documentary short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, so if anyone knows where i can get hold of a copy of that, hit me up and i will reward you with some Polish sausage or something. Word.

1 And endearingly over-high in the mix, for that matter.2 Couldn't work out for sure what this says, though some research into Polish cuisine throws up czernina – duck blood soup – as probably the closest-sounding dish. Like the kiszka, it's also full of blood.

The third album by Bristol-born, Berlin-based DJ Anton Maiof under his (possibly Italo-disco informed) Antoni Maiovvi alias, The Thorns of Love claims kinship with the “overwhelming horror of the stalked… the sound of dimly lit streets where everyone is at risk”. It’s no coincidence that two of his top MySpace friends, juxtaposed next to one another, are John Carpenter and Giorgio Moroder...

Wednesday, 11 August 2010

i like Big Len Cohen as much as the next guy, but i seem to prefer his songs as done by other people, for the most part.

Today's one of the best Cohen covers, Martha Wainwright's "Tower of Song", from the 2005 film soundtrack I'm Your Man (presumably it's also in the film, but i haven't seen that). The ghostly slide-guitar backing is perfect, and the way her voice cracks around the line "we'll never ever have to lose it again" kinda makes me want to marry her. Ahhh, Martha.

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Via Lachlann, who sent it to me via Spotify: probably the second-best version of this song ever recorded. (No, the best is not the one you're thinking of.) The genius switch-up at 0:41 is worth the admission fee alone. For that matter, so is the whole "i see a little silhouette-a of a man" section.

Named after a volcanic tunnel in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, The Thurston Lava Tube are "a psychedelic, experimental surf instrumental band from Leicester", which i think you'll agree is a quite extraordinary proposition. They've done five or maybe six albums since 2001, the first one being a whole album of Beatles covers in a surf style. Their official website doesn't seem to work, but they have a MySpace. This track appeared on the 2006 album The Thoughtful Sounds of Bat Smuggling, as well on the excellently-titled Cordelia Records compilation Beyond the Sea: The Surf Instrumental Bands of the World Fearlessly Extend Their Repertoire.

According to Wikipedia, one of The Tube's members, Alan Jenkins, was also in Leicester groups The Deep Freeze Mice and The Chrysanthemums. The former have albums called things like Teenage Head in My Refrigerator, The Gates of Lunch and Rain Is When the Earth is Television, while the latter's mix of "psychedelic pop, punk and elements of progressive rock" sounds strikingly Cardiacs-y and therefore immediately interesting. Gonna go and try and find more of all the above-mentioned stuff now. i may well report back on this.

Tuesday, 20 July 2010

This morning i read an article in which Keith Buckley, singer for "metalcore-with-Southern-rock-elements" band Every Time I Die, blasted the bands he's currently on the Warped Tour with for being fake, for such crimes as having regulation haircuts and dress sense, using autotune and drum machines, and being liked by teenagers.

Where to even start?

1. Keith: YOUR band (right) have regulation haircuts and dress sense. If it makes it easier for you, try to imagine your complex bad-ass tattoos, denim 'n' band t-shirts as merely the equivalent of "a deep swoop [of hair] that crosses your entire forehead". It's just that you work in a paradigm deemed "cool" by the tastemaker rock establishment, rather than one whose fans who have developed/are engaged in their own trends and don't care what the Metal Police™ think of them.

2. "What is it that drives you[i.e. fans of, e.g., 'crunkcore'/'glow pop'] to assemble in masses and sing along to lyrics about “shots” when you are easily five years under the legal drinking limit? Why are you buying shirts that say “Fuck Bitches, Get Money” when most of you have never: a) fucked or b) gotten money?"

Right on, bro! And why did that guy Shakespeare – y'know, that old dude who was your major in college – write about a Jewish money-lender in Venice? He'd never been a Jewish money-lender and he didn't live in Venice! WHAT A PHONY! i guess he should be condemned as a fraud and his plays discarded as false and useless from now on, right?

3. Autotune and drum machines aren't indicators of "realness" or "fakeness", they're tools designed to achieve certain sonic effects, much like distorted guitars and screaming are. Presumably you wouldn't slag off a saxophonist or a marimba player for playing a "fake" instrument. So where's the official list of Proscribed Musical Techniques, please? i'd like to check that my band is correctly following the regulations, so we can be like everyone else and not stick out. (What's so fucking great about guitar-drums-bass-vocals anyway?)

4. Technically, anyone who uses a PA or amplification, or indeed anything more than basic acoustic instrumentation is as "fake" as one another, as these are artificial processes. And hell, instruments are innately fake, even acoustic ones. They don't occur in nature. Someone had to cut a coupla trees down to fashion them lovingly into that spruce/maple soundbox so we could enjoy these campfire bro-fi jamz. And nylon doesn't grow on trees! (i touched on some of these issues in an earlier piece on – yes! – Milli Vanilli.)

5. Teenagers like your stuff too, Keith. i see that to get over this problem, you have conveniently subdivided them into "smart" or "dumb" ones, claiming that fans of stuff you don't like are mere sheep-like marketing victims, "[eating] up the music that media push on [them]", too stupid to make aesthetic judgements for themselves (unless they learn the error of their stupid teenage ways and "correct these mistakes", possibly through internment in a Humourless Hardcore Bros Gulag), whereas ones with suss and intelligence will naturally gravitate towards Hot Damn! or New Junk Aesthetic. Well that's terribly convenient, isn't it! How lucky for you that all the ones that like your band happen to be the smart, thinking-for-themselves ones! It couldn't possibly be that people make their own informed choices that you happen to disagree with, could it? Oh no.

6. "Most “artists” don’t even write their own songs."
Neither did Frank Sinatra. Nor do most classical string quartets or orchestras. And i've heard that some jazz groups play what's called "improvised" music – that stuff's not written by anyone! Scary stuff, huh?!

i can't believe it's 2010 and people are still using this knuckle-dragging, myopic redundancy as an argument.

7. "This “Glow-Pop” that has contaminated music like poison in the well simply needs to be seen for what it really is--a shameless exploitation of inexperience... It has given kids a focus, an place to assemble, an anthem and much like religion, it has given them a unifying symbol and convinced them that the more people “hate on it”, the more right they are in standing tall in the face of opposition."

Again, please explain how the above differs from your scene, except in the sense that yours has more approval from meatheaded crypto-jocks who give it the thumbs-up in irrelevant categories like "realness"? Except now you've been forced on to the other side. You're no longer the ones who get to assume the edgy outsider rebel mantle, and it's eating you.

8. Oh: and why the fuck are you still on the Warped Tour profiting from the same kids you deem to be stupid, tasteless plebs if you hate it so much? Surely you should start your own tour, the Unerringly Authentic Real Music Oh Quick Someone Suck My Dick I'm So Amazing Tour, instead? Surely to do otherwise would make you a wholly insincere hypocrite?

In conclusion: listen to Every Time I Die's turgid metalcore grunting if you want, but don't bother using the supposed 'superiority' of this as a weapon. Your group-of-choice's protestations about how much more real and unmarketed they are compared to others is, ironically and amusingly, mere marketing. But you knew that, right? After all, you're "the smart ones".

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Lachlann found today's Song of the Day, "Bom Chik, Bom Chik" by Indian playback singer, actor, lyricist, composer, producer, director and screenwriter Kishore Kumar, on Spotify, and it fills me with great joy.

i love everything about this song, from the opening Indian-language1 spiel and Kumar's bypass of the usual counting in favour of an enthusiastic "A, B, C, D!" to the sudden ending, marked, bizarrely, by a cuckoo clock going off. The gleefully onomatopoeiac vocal rides an insistent shuffling rhythm, occasionally answered by serene brass arrangements, until at 02:43, a completely unexpected speed change-up leaves Kumar just enough time to spit out a few more rapid lines before the song ends. i don't know what any of this means, but it's great.

Some of Kumar's high-spirited whoops and howls also reminded me a little of the vocalisations of American roots music (ok, i admit it, the first thing i thought of was the dancing chicken from Stroszek,2 as soundtracked by Sonny Terry). His Wiki bio indeed reveals that in developing his own style instead of emulating his hero K. L. Saigal, Kumar incorporated a yodelling style copped from country blues pioneer Jimmie Rodgers.

The bio also reveals KK to have been quite the practical joker:

Kishore Kumar had put a "Beware of Kishore" sign at the door of his Warden Road flat, where he stayed for some time while his bungalow was being done up. Once, the producer-director H. S. Rawail, who owed him some money, visited his flat to pay the dues. Kishore Kumar took the money, and when Rawail offered to shake hands with him, he reportedly put Rawail's hand in his mouth, bit it, and asked "Didn’t you see the sign?". Rawail laughed off the incident and left quickly.[15]

According to another reported incident, once Kishore Kumar was to record a song for the producer-director G. P. Sippy. As Sippy approached his bungalow, he saw Kishore going out in his car. Sippy pleaded him to stop his car, but Kishore only increased the speed of his car. Sippy chased him to Madh Island, where Kishore Kumar finally stopped his car near the ruined Madh Fort. When Sippy questioned his strange behavior, Kishore Kumar refused to recognize or talk to him and threatened to call police. Sippy had to return. Next morning, Kishore Kumar reported for the recording. An angry Sippy questioned him about his behavior on the previous day. However, Kishore Kumar insisted that Sippy must have seen a dream, and claimed that he was in Khandwa on the previous day.

1 i'm aware there isn't an "Indian language" as such, but Kishore sang in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam and Oriya if not more, and i don't speak any of those so i can't tell which one this is in.2 And i forgot how funny the kick drum-playing duck and fire-truck driving rabbit are in that sequence.

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Yeah, yeah, you all know who Daniel Johnston is and need no introduction from me. Three points i will note, however:

– Though Daniel's greatest musical love and influence were The Beatles, i'd be hard-pushed to think of any Beatles song that matches the tenderness, fragility or honesty of this.1

– The vocal echo is just heartbreaking.

– The parent album, 1990, was recorded at one of the lowest points in Daniel's mental health. On the hymn-like "Careless Love", recorded live, he actually breaks down in tears in the middle. The faltering of his voice in the incredibly sad line "i won't forget all the things we did", starting at 1:55, sounds like it could possibly be another such moment. The emotion is palpable.

Apparently some band called Beach House also covered this, but from descriptions i've heard of them it sounds like exactly the sort of thing i never want to hear.

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

i'm not usually a big disco fan (i don't actively dislike it, just don't know or encounter it a lot), but i appreciate the way it applies equal focus to both the dancefloor and the part of the brain that digs melodies and songcraft, unlike a lot of contemporary dancefloor fare which solely prioritises the dancefloor at the expense of putting any interesting bits in, and consequently, ironically, fails at both (oh hi, majority of dubstep!)

"Dancing on Townsquare" probably isn't a great or classic record (even my friend Jack, who introduced me to it, thinks it's "rubbish") but it has a certain charm nonetheless. Perhaps hearing it first on a sunny Brighton morning in the aftermath a night of extreme alcoholic carnage, surrounded by a group of similar recovering burnouts, was the charm. Plus i also like the sense of "everything-is-grim, together-we-will-overcome-it, possibly-through-funky-dancing" grift in the detail about the people "trying to keep their dreams afloat". If we're going to have an 80s government, we might as well also have soulful 80s solidarity anthems.

The Chaplin Band seem to have been a Dutch disco group from the early 80s (this might explain why no-one has ever heard of them). They're most noted for the A-side of this particular 12", "Il Veliero" ("The Sailing Ship"), which is a pretty great little overlooked gem of its own.

Monday, 28 June 2010

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach, however by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Dear Beeb news writers: you can't use "however" between two commas as you would "although". You need a semi-colon/full-stop and a comma, thus:

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach. However, by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach; however, by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Dunno why this irks me so much, but i dare say i expect higher standards from the BBC. If they're still having trouble with this, they could always give me a news-writing job. i can do basic grammar and would even capitalise my own personal pronoun if necessary.

WFMU is my favourite radio station in the world, but for some odd reason i never listened to the show Shut Up, Weirdo before this past couple of weeks, when i seem to have listened to about 20-odd episodes (odd being the operative word). Anyway, the SUW binge got me flicking through some of FMU's other webspaces. While browsing the 2010 marathon1 Flickr gallery, i was reminded of the genius of today's song of the day after seeing the Knuckles the Dog velvet painting:

i am so adopting this guy next year.

Anyway, "Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People)" tells the moving story of the noble, loving hound depicted above, his friendship with the disabled boy whose life he saved, and his charitable works. Also, it has an ace title. It's from an album called Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, whose title is also ace. What's more, the song is also good, in an irresistible deadpan-gruff-heroism sort of way. Three for three!

1 WFMU is wholly listener-supported, and their yearly two-week marathon involves the listeners pledging money to keep them afloat for another year. Impressively, they manage to take in a million dollars a year or thereabouts, which is probably testament to the slightly obsessive nature of the listeners.

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

i've heard it said a lot recently that with the impending demise of the traditional music industry, artists are having to think of ever more canny and inventive ways to market themselves, but this takes the biscuit.

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Diss1 (me) and Dastardly from 30KB chatting some thoughts on flags, anthems, nationalism, etc. over "The Anthem" by ace Parisian beatmaker Onra.

"The Anthem", incidentally, was also remade to feature in a Coca-Cola ad for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, though their vision of global unity seems mainly to involve Yao Ming and LeBron James guiding a load of national stereotypes in a really half-arsed battle before toasting each other with soft drinks. Also, the version of the track they used is much inferior, because Onra hadn't cleared the samples from the original and thus they had a musicologist replay everything (by the end, nothing Onra actually did was left on the track). It just doesn't have the right bounce or swagger to it.

If you like the beat, try his 2007 album Chinoiseries, which is all made from sampled Vietnamese and Chinese records (Onra himself is of Vietnamese descent). This is probably the best track on it to these ears, although that's not to say the rest are slacking by any means.

[diss1] We smash a silent prism. Rhythm fill up the schism. They got a warrant on this recidivist lyricism. i'm feeling sorta hyper. Somebody pass a lighter. i filter flowing through a tetrahydro- sorta cypher. Step to the stage, we *punch* like John Prescott. See for yourself just how much better the best got. Just try and keep the beat. Hold on to your receipt. Murder mystery weekend silencer, guest shot.[AcheZen Pains] A cool belated structure from disjunction as a tool, refuse it. Life lesson and rule: stop, look and listen to music. Cut the wacky sample, as a result you forfeit and lose this. Old school like pterodactyl, prehistoric tune abusers. We bring the new ish, the first thing on your wishlist. The last door to break the knocking hand of the last Jehovah's Witness. Picking the seams for indifference, it's gotta be somebody's business. A hobby tree of commodity, as ugly as you are ambitious. Will this mocking stop? Nah, it's gonna last forever. Spit a nasty fluid, evil like I got a mad vendetta. But you've got to get better because nobody likes your flows. Attack and make your lungs collapse through panic. That's the way it goes. When sober, drunk or stoned, grip tight to microphone, sniff the stuff I'm smoking will leave you with a bleeding nose. Don't get me wrong though, in case misunderstood: I am an artist, but I won't draw blood.

We take the stage and we soar
30,000 rise-to-the-occasions for the problems of keeping it raw
Careful with that thing when you're passin'...*Who's the microphone assassin?*

[AZP] Our lilt's a little lighter, Slim Pickens riding bombs. Flow like a "Beatslope" biter, warm-up phenomenon. Now what the hell's he on? We struck a light chord. For years we take from tears until it appears unclear what we fight for. I write more, that's lesson one from ampheta-metatron. Stomp cities like I'm Megalon, pity what I'm stepping on. The weapon's on, the weapon's aimed and with that grows the guessing game. Solutions for some second fame, we're shooting for a better day.[diss1] 30K is sort of like the new H5N1. Smartest guys in the room, more so than Enron, cuz when a plan go wrong it's not our names on the paper. Already ducked out the back door saying "see ya later!" Second-rate caterers savour lame shit, we on some future tip like "get these motherfucking snakes off my spaceship!" Eject 'em out the airlock. In space, nobody can hear you hiss... ultimate Dolby noise reduc for those who diss [*one!*] Tranquility shattered down to splinters. Style with the bile to turn your nuclear fams to nuclear winters, and when Chernobyl savages hunter/gather the wilderness for dinner i'll claim squatter's rights on the podium of the winner. Check it: back to the city's lights sober. In the overpass, spirits linger in the air like an odour of cheap perfume, piss and chip fat. And this town... is coming like Pripyat.

This one was a song-of-the-day last month, and now Delusionists have only gone and made a video for it! i also have a complete set of lyrics so you can peep the sheer amount of smart blog/website references in them while Ben, DBF and Slim Pickens guide you around the track in moody/arty black'n'white.

This rap shit Beats Laying About, so I had to take a minute dedicated a shout,
To every Hip Hop Connection Digital direction providers
Who act like a Sensei and guide us.
Through these Hip Hop Chronicles of Riddick like Vin DieselU-Music buffs must have been puffing them Cocaine Blunts (just a quick toke),Hip Hop Isn’t Dead, nah it just eloped to the Big Smoke.
Believe the Hip Hop Hype Dog,
If you ain’t heard of us you ain’t checking for the right blog.Oh Word? You never heard the fly chatter
Of a Bonafide nutter on a Certified Banger?
My Style43 times nanger than most,
To redefine The Meaning of Dope rhyme patterns and quotes.The Underground Strikes Back from the great depression
With Bare Beats in them Basement Sessions.
You might hear one or 2DopeBoyz
No Airs N Graces and prone to make noise
Like “mate what you want!?!” Stay Blatantly Blunt
Pushing UKHH straight to the front (that’s us!).
Repping UK All Day,
Be careful ‘cause Life Just Bounces away
When you play with Vocal Swords that slaughter chumps,
Better Wake Your Daughter Up, if that bitch is sleeping.
Had to switch to a Different Kitchen,
‘Cause the raw Unkut left the kitchen reeking.
With something different to these drug-obsessed amateurs
And only push dope via Suspect Packages.
(Yeah) And the beat plays on
And we don’t stop rocking ‘til the DJ Gone (gone).
God willing we can make Top Billin’ Above Ground
Without dumbing down to a club sound.Strictly Independant, my brothers and me
And you can hit the button marked RWD
And you’ll agree that it’s wack, Nah Right, shit’s Fat Lace lyrics with links just to give love back
To all the digital connects.

Oh, and not only that, but should you fancy copping the album after hearing this (totally worth it i'd say), you can get 25% off the download of our album by using the code DIGIFAM at http://music.delusionists.co.uk.

Sunday, 20 June 2010

Wherein AZP delivers incisive, meaningful lyrics about animal rights extremists, and i chat shit about breakfast foods for 16 bars. Contrary to popular belief, the misspelling in the title is deliberate, although no-one can really remember why.

[chorus: both plus Boron Tabernacle Choir]
30,000 Bastards...

[AcheZen Pains] Hold up! A prime cut from these 30,000 nuts. If you're allergic, watch us work your open mouth until it has to shut. Drinking from the cup with Super Saiyan spontaneity. In sync with linguistics, heaven sent like call me deity. May I? ["OUI!"] You can call us monastic: word play's the religion against the merit of rigid scholastics. Take Vs without asking on some premier robber tricks. Don't grasp what we giving? Go sit on the hat of Obelix. Now he's rocking it, it's ALL animal tested. i'm Pro-Test and PETA should have their bones dug up and sequestered. Direct the vets to the exits. Lack of a logic protecting this. Some of the scariest things in the world are the anti-vivisectionists. Now he's wrecking it! But all for medicinal purposes. Nurture this, unleash the worth as it dissipates from surfaces. A discourteous earful of self-destructive skirmishes. Playground thoughts and tactics with an abundance of worthlessness.

[chorus]

[diss1]Le passé est passé. Le présent est présent. L'avenir est à venir. And so we have another year to let the beat dangle off the precipice. i got to pay attention to my head and like that druid, get a fix. Don't bother trynna flavour porridge with them sweetener sticks, you'll just end up with a mess like waiting too long for Weetabix. Meet is what i like to eet yo, i want bacon by the rasher, black pudding and pork sausages after. Most important meal of the day: i leave space to eat rappers for afters with metaphors by the platter and apple sauce relish in my side dish. It's a delicacy. Don't believe me? Ask the chef: he'll say ["OUI!"]. i made the beat, and i'll make a meal too. The top of the food chain, enjoying the view. It's the feeding of the 30K, superfly catering. It's all art, no artificial flavouring.

Saturday, 19 June 2010

[AcheZen Pains] Under the rock, a man snaps his own arm off with the precedent to end the gruel. Under the hammer, our ex-prime minister-slash-president plays the fool. What we've got here is a new reign of old fear, the irony of tyranny. It's all too cruel. Forget latter headlines with some imagery. Oh, you missed it? Go check YouTube. Too rude to tell me what to think, if you missed it click on another link to the brink of a meme over cryptic. Politics a trick and the voters went and missed it. Our death clocks reading 20:11, no time for dissatisfaction. Hands behind backs still holding a weapon, ejecting the world while nobody's strapped in. No joke delivered, here today and gone tomorrow when this country's built on smoke and mirrors and the crowd go "oh! the horror!" The media gets greedier, inbreeding facts mislead the mass until we cannot face the fact that we're the warhead-onists. Trick the readers to agree with gracious interveners - a theme of stopping screams, a clever twist for the supremacists. Making us believe that news writers aren't the terrorists. No distinction from the fact and fiction - are we getting this?

[chorus: either or both]
A kingdom full of doubting cuz it's not our vote they're counting
and now it's all over bar the shouting. ("Where's the exit?")
('Way before the metal detectors and barbed wire')
Can't see the trees for the forest fire ("What we left with?")

[diss1] Neat how the best fall. Peet lace the beat like Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot directly through the chest wall. This twisted little personal Hallelujah Chorus got us blowing up the road like driving Fallujah tourbus. Land of the barbed wire, car bomb and grenade, where they tear down the statues for the ticker-tape parade and you can die whether you're a hero or coward, and if the vote changed anything they wouldn't allow it. i subjected them to tests and found them lacking and some see it as just evolution's function. Tho as always, it depends on who you're asking. Dunno if Darwin was counting on mass destruction. When the beast beneath the surface came bursting through the cervix the John Hurt Alien nation discovered purpose, and it can only lead to an impending disaster. i'm in the carnival of horrors with demented ringmaster.

[chorus]

[AZP] As another channel changes with the banging of a different drum, commercial bursts of focus work on where we get our wisdom from. Lurking with the hopeless, working till it chokes us, difficult when the rhetorician brokers with the expositional.[d1] This track is like Runaway Mine Train freak decapitation, too bloody for your radio station. Beats make crowds frenzy like the crack of a whip. We can outstrip anything that you're travelling with.[AZP] Beauty's in the ear of the beholder and my ears, they burn volition. Listen to the deceit from the older cheap seats, Britain... truth is, duty's only skin deep, and these politicians got a skin condition when their sin speaks...[d1] ...when their sin speaks volumes like audiobooks. Tell stories with hooks, could leave your day spoiled like too many cooks. A 7% solution: instant brain intrusion. The track's fusion, hip-hop ain't noise pollution.

Cowboy anthem. Featuring Living Larceny who now goes by a different name and is a proper group member. Produced by Artikal-10 who goes by the same name and is also a proper member.

[diss1] 30K flow on some Wild North West script - more of a mystic tip than a Will Smith flick. Future mil sellers, never box office poison. When Artikal drops the beat, we bring the noise in. Cop siren synth make me wanna smoke up some George Lucas. The badlands are wired with computers. Mad losers lost to the thuggery. This is wild NW shit, the good, bad and ugg-er-ly.[Living Larceny] Oh! Heaven forbid we should try and live positive. Cuz north-west got me sick with its politics. No optimist, this is one you should miss off your tourbook. 30KB with that raw hook. Bad luck to see a place so desecrated. Addiction, most of the Wirral eradicated by Merseyside's finest. Rhymes full of metaphors, knowledge and the odd one-liners.

[chorus: all] Cuz this is how we do it in the North Wild West
Spitting raw shit till our very last breath
Beats by our side in case you haven't guessed
Streets of the blessed, just check the address

[AcheZen Pains] Rap this sipping on the juice of a cactus. North where your horse probably hasn't got a tax disc. Back in the throne of the brand of the underneath, cone in the hand full of high grade tumbleweed. Cowboys wanna kick off? Try and embarrass me. Warcry "HIP-HOP", scalping guaranteed. Savagery the stander of a wrangler attackin 'em. North wild west, mate - this mohawk ain't an accident.[LL] Larceny speaks diction with an outlaw mindframe. 23 years to my name, dope like John Wayne. El Mariachi! North-west Wirral apache, gingerbredraaan but you can't catch me. I'm way ahead of my time, way ahead of your crew (still at the starting line). Aren't even worth putting on my roster. North-western, that's why i keep my weed in my holster.

[chorus: all]

[d1] Heaven forbid we should try and live more than this. Call me Kowalski on some break-for-the-border shit. Cuz while some of these kids follow cosy trails, others carry more heat than Josey Wales. (It goes...) Once upon a time on the edge of a country, they nurtured a movement and called it funky, and when haters started hating when that shit took off, they said "this town ain't big enough for the both, so fuck off."[AZP] Unbidden I get vocal from my fear, yo. Many fiddling to a burning Rome like they Nero. Thirty thousand focal pointing at this local hero. Keep that ear low to the floor - I challenge you all to a draw. You can find me through the saloon door. Chop the bow and arrows with significant force and then try spitting some more. It's the magnificent four. It's not a wild guess, you know the wild west from the north.